Technology: A gift or A curse?

Lately I have read many articles on technology and internet issues.In the past week there have been the following: Some of Google had been hacked in China, Nintendo server being hacked into. A few weeks back, the case of Sony being hacked into and personal information of users were stolen. As technology advances, we find ourselves using it more and more in everyday life, relying on it more and if put into extreme context, we have become totally dependent to it and may at times become slaves to technology. Who can honestly say they do not check their phones or emails at least 2-3 times or more a day? How many of us would say the first thing we grab in the morning before we wake up is our phone?

I am guessing if we actually recorded our own time usage of technology in just one day, we will be shocked. If you think about it this will include: phones, PC, internet, television, gadgets….

The table below show’s how the use of internet has increased dramatically.

http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

WORLD INTERNET USAGE AND POPULATION STATISTICS
World Regions	Population ( 2011 Est.)	Internet Users Dec. 31, 2000	Internet Users Mar. 31, 2011	Penetration (% Population)
Africa	1,037,524,058	4,514,400	118,609,620	11.4 %
Asia	3,879,740,877	114,304,000	922,329,554	23.8 %
Europe	816,426,346	105,096,093	476,213,935	58.3 %
Middle East	216,258,843	3,284,800	68,553,666	31.7 %
North America	347,394,870	108,096,800	272,066,000	78.3 %
Latin America/Carib.	597,283,165	18,068,919	215,939,400	36.2 %
Oceania / Australia	35,426,995	7,620,480	21,293,830	60.1 %
WORLD TOTAL	6,930,055,154	360,985,492	2,095,006,005	30.2 %

 Technology is like a big block that has numerous compartments that do different things. In very simple view the below rectangle is how my perception of technology is in a very “simple world”. Each one in different shape and size – possessing its own abilities.

 

“Chicago (IL) – A U.N. report published today states that six in ten people (60%) of the world’s population has a cell phone subscription. The driving growth trend is coming from poor, developing countries. This 60% figure is up from just under 15% in 2002.” – http://www.tgdaily.com/trendwatch-features/41586-60-of-worlds-population-now-has-cell-phone-highest-ever

Technology has changed the way we think, interactive, and basically how we live our life because it has become such a big part of our everyday life. Children nowadays have access to so much more technology than years ago. If you think about it, with a PC and internet, a few clicks can transport you to a different world. You can see pictures, music, maps, information about any country in this world, and even out of this world. The use of game consoles have changed the way we interact, in the past kids would play on the streets with each other. Today they would connect using the internet to play games with each other, they would text or message or tweet or skype each other rather than meet up face to face. Meetings at work no longer mean you have to go to a different country or company to see the people face to face, as you can now use video conferencing or Skype.

These have been all due to the way technology has advanced and merged with our life.

As more and more of us input our personal information onto the internet, do we even take a second to think about what kind of risks we are putting ourselves into? How much information our Facebook account has on us? Or Google? or Hotmail accounts? Or Skype? Or online storage? The list goes on.

As technology has further advanced itself, we have been given unlimited access to the “cloud” with sites/applications such as dropbox, opendrive, Zumo drive, and very soon icloud. We will proceed to input greater and more sensitive information onto the internet. The obvious but unconscious issue is that we know we are putting it on there but we do not think about where it is actually going(because that’s the beauty but at the same time flaw of it all).

As we weigh the advantages against the risk of it all, we find ourselves coming to the conclusion that technology does hold many risk(some quite damaging) however the advantages outweigh the risk by a lot hence we continue to find ourselves using it all.

So a gift or a curse, who knows!

What do you think?

It really depends on how you use it, your luck. So let’s just say “Only time can tell.”

[[[ If you enjoyed this post, then you may be interested in another article I have written about technology and beyond….]]]

https://vixstar1314.wordpress.com/3d-data-death-data/

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